In this podcast, you’ll learn how to improve your English pronunciation. Specifically, how to pronounce consonants when they are together in a word, like ‘stop’ and ‘twelfth’.
Consonant Clusters – What are consonant clusters?
A consonant cluster is when two or more consonant sounds appear together in a word without any vowel sounds in between. (Don’t confuse letters with sounds.) For example:
“Stop”
“Street”
“Crunch”
“Gangster”
“Robbed”
“Twelfth” or plural “Twelfths”
These combinations can be at the beginning (stop), middle (gangster), or end (robbed) of a word. Or a combination (twelfths)
Some words look like they have consonant clusters, but they DON’T have a consonant cluster:
“Chat” – CH is considered one consonant sound, though it is two letters
“Night” – GH is silent in this word
“Path” – TH is a digraph (one sound made up of two letters)
In some languages, like Spanish, consonant clusters are much less common, especially at the beginning of words. Spanish often inserts an extra vowel sound to break up the cluster. For example:
Instead of “school,” a Spanish speaker might say “eschool”
“Street” might become “estreet”
This is because many Spanish words follow the pattern consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC), so two consonants together can feel unnatural.
Scratch/es – Be careful not to scratch the table with your keys.
Task/s
Clothes – Don’t forget to pack your winter clothes.
Twelfth – His birthday is on the twelfth of July.
Asked, helped. danced, talked, laughed, looked, missed /t/
(The ‘-ed’ ending on past regular verbs: https://inglespodcast.com/60 )
Shrimp
Text/s – I’ll text you
Accept
Crisp/s – I’ve bought 3 packets of crisps
Sixth – She came in sixth place in the race.
Basket
Clusters require quick, precise tongue and mouth movements
Producing several consonants in a row needs muscle coordination and practice.
How to practise
Break the cluster into parts and practise slowly.
E.g. Shrimps: say “shrim – shrimp – shrimps”
Drenched: say “dren – drench – drenched”
Listen and repeat words with clusters using audio recordings (shadowing/echoing)
Use phonemic transcription to see the real sounds (e.g. street → /striːt/).
Practise minimal pairs (e.g. sip vs slip, pit vs split).
Record and compare your speech to native speakers.
…and now it’s your turn to practise your English. What do you find difficult about English pronunciation? Tell us and we’ll record a podcast about it.
Send us a voice message. https://www.speakpipe.com/inglespodcast
Send us an email with a comment or question to [email protected] or [email protected]
If you’re a Spanish speaker and you want to improve your English with free and paid resources, visit the mansioningles website at mansioningles.com and for paid products you can browse the online store at https://store.mansioningles.net/
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Á. Reina
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In next week’s episode: Some words and phrases every architect should know
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The music in this podcast is by Pitx. The track is called ‘See You Later’